Unlikely assist: Former UCLA basketball star and coach Larry Farmer puts ego aside to coach with friends at Western Michigan University

Jonathon GruenkeWMU assistant basketball coach Larry Farmer, shown at right talking with Flenard Whitfield during Wednesday's game against Toledo, has embraced his role with the Broncos.

KALAMAZOO — Larry Farmer’s enthusiasm for a relatively unremarkable moment early last November is still stuck in Steve Hawkins’ mind.

It was one sentence shared between longtime friends before Western Michigan University’s first exhibition game this season, Farmer’s first game night as an assistant coach on the staff of a kid who once worked HIS basketball camps. But it explained so much about what truly matters to Farmer, about who he is — perhaps as much as anything on a compelling 40-year basketball resume.

“We were getting ready to play Spring Arbor,” Hawkins began. “Right before it, you’re putting the jacket on, giving the last (pep talk), ‘Let’s go!’ And Larry looked at me and said, ‘You know, through all these years, this (stuff) still excites me.’ And we’re getting ready to play Spring Arbor. It’s Western Michigan against Spring Arbor.”

WMU at Eastern Michigan

Three national championships as a player at UCLA, three different head coaching jobs at Division I programs and years of tutelage under some of the great minds in basketball hasn’t stopped Farmer from enjoying the simple anticipation that comes with the beginning of a new season — no matter the level of basketball or the size of his office.

If anything, his trek — from 89-1 as a player at UCLA to his head coaching stops at UCLA, Weber State and Loyola of Chicago — has helped him in this regard.

“I think a lot of guys when they first do this, they have ego issues,” said Farmer, who, at 30 years old, was the head coach at UCLA, a tenure that lasted from 1981-85, before he resigned after going 61-23 over four seasons. “And when I was young guy starting out, I can vouch for the fact I did, too. But I think you reach a point in this business, where if your heart is really in it and it’s what you want to do, you’ll do it anywhere, you’ll do it at any level.

Larry Farmer

Playing career: Averaged 9.4 points and 4.8 rebounds while helping UCLA to three national championships from 1971-73. Drafted by Cleveland of the NBA and Denver of the ABA, but spent the next year as a GA for John Wooden, before playing one season overseas in 1975.Coaching career: Assistant at UCLA from 1975-81, before becoming the head coach of the Bruins until 1985, compiling a 61-23 record in four seasons. Head coach at Weber State from 1985-88 and at Loyola of Chicago from 1998-2004. Also coached the Kuwaiti national team from 1992-97 and spent and was an assistant coach for the Golden State Warriors (1990-91), the University of Rhode Island (1997-98) and Hawaii (2007-10).Personal: Wife Chris, son Larry III (21) and daughter Kendall (15) live in Gurnee, Ill.

“If things go your way or they don’t go your way, you might be a head coach, you might be an assistant. But the idea is, if this is what you really want to do, you’ll do it.”

That he’s doing it right now at WMU — after most recently spending three seasons as an assistant at the University of Hawaii — has been a boon to Hawkins and a bevy of young post players in the program.

Farmer’s opinion instantly carried weight with Hawkins and his stories of only losing once in college quickly earned him credibility with a group of players that otherwise didn’t know the world existed before 1990.

“From what he did on that team (at UCLA) and the players he played with and the coach he came from, you automatically respect him,” Broncos junior power forward Flenard Whitfield said. “You know he knows his stuff.”

When asked what Farmer has meant to a Broncos team that’s overachieved this season in the eyes of many, Hawkins didn’t hesitate, repeating the phrase, “a ton.”

“He’s a meticulous teacher,” Hawkins said, explaining how Farmer will stop practice to raise the arms of center Muhammed Conteh two inches in his post stance, or shift his feet half a foot defensively. “ ... It’s a big deal to him, the detail in everything.

“And it works well for us because we have some young kids in the post. And through teaching those details with the big guys, he’s been able to slow the game down for them, which makes them a little bit more polished than they really are.”

When Farmer took the job at WMU in July — in part to be closer to his wife and children, based in suburban Chicago — it meant he’d be working for someone who once nearly worked for him and who, years before that, used to trot around with blonde hair parted down the middle and feathered in the back, wearing a Larry Farmer basketball camp T-shirt.

“I found that photo and I brought it in and showed Larry,” Hawkins said of picture of him on his 21st birthday, when Farmer was the coach at UCLA. “He said, ‘Look at that hair!’ I said, ‘No, look at the T-shirt.’”

Coming to WMU also reunited Farmer and Broncos assistant Jeff Dunlap, who played for Farmer at UCLA and coached under him at Loyola of Chicago.

Hawkins, too, nearly joined Farmer at Loyola, in 1999 — an opening created by the departure of Dunlap — a year before Hawkins became an assistant at WMU.

Barely more than a decade later, Farmer is on equal footing with Dunlap and working for Hawkins, his ego put aside, his motives appearing as pure as his friendship.

“Coach Hawk is without question the head coach, and I have the ultimate respect for him in that way,” Farmer said. “And I think one of the reasons he felt comfortable in hiring a friend is that he knew that motives and intentions to be here with him were to help him.

“When you go to work, No. 1, you go to work with guys that you like, guys that you trust. (Assistant Rick) Carter was the only guy I didn’t know and I love him. He’s crazy but I love him. ... You’ve got history with these guys, you got stories about them. It’s made for a very comfortable work place. You don’t always get that.”

Having Farmer by his side has done the same for Hawkins, who enjoys the shared understanding of all that goes into being a head coach, something most assistants don’t fully grasp.

As for Farmer’s opinion on matters from planning practice to tense moments during games ...

“It certainly caries more weight ... on a lot of different levels,” Hawkins said. “No. 1, he’s seen more basketball than I have. He was an assistant in the NBA. He worked for Don Nelson. He was assistant coach for Larry Brown at UCLA, played for John Wooden. I mean he’s been around some of the greatest basketball minds ever.

“It carries more weight, because he has seen it and he has done it and he has seen it be successful or unsuccessful. And he wouldn’t be saying it if he hadn’t seen it work somewhere along his stops.

“And the second thing ... he’s sat in my seat before.”

Farmer would like to be in that seat again, running his own program. Hawkins knew that when he hired Farmer. It’s why he was surprised his friend was at all interested in the gig he had to offer.

At 60, Farmer is no longer sweating what he can’t control.

“That would be great,” Farmer said of becoming a head coach again. “I think you always keep that in the back of your mind. But the reality is now you just want to work. I’ve been a head coach. I loved being a head coach. There are different parts of that, especially the first of every month, that you like a lot better than being an assistant. But then there’s a lot of fun to be an assistant, too. I know what it’s like to leave here and go home and watch film and not have all the weight of the world on your shoulders, like you do when you’re on the end seat.

“If it happens, great. If it doesn’t, as long as I’m coaching, I’m not going to worry about it.”